Chapter 22: War and the American State, 1914-1920

The Great War, 1914-1918

I. When war erupted in August 1914, most Americans saw no reason to get involved in a struggle among
European’s imperialistic powers. No vital American interests were at stake. But a combination of
factors—economic interests, violations of neutral rights, cultural ties with GB and France, and
Germans miscalculations—drew the US into the war in 1917.
War in Europe
I. The combatants were divided into 2 rival blocs. The Allied Powers—GB, France, Russia, Japan, and in
1915, Italy—were pitted against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, joined by
Bulgaria in 1915.
The Perils of Neutrality
I. As the bloody stalemate continued, the US grappled with its role in the international conflagration.
A. Two weeks after the outbreak of war in Europe, President Wilson had made the American position
clear, calling on Americans to remain neutral.
II. Wilson wanted to keep out of the war in order to play a larger role in world affairs. Only if he kept
America aloof from the European quarrel could he impartially arbitrate—and influence—its ultimate
settlement.
III. The nation’s divided loyalties also influenced Wilson’s policies.
A. Many Americans felt cultural ties to the Allies, but Irish Americans resented the British occupation
of their home.
B. Immigrants from Germany and Austria-Hungary made up one of the largest ethnic groups in the
US. Many aspects of German culture were widely admired.
IV. Many isolationist Americans had no sympathy for either side.
A. Pacifist sentiment was diffuse but broad.
B. Newly formed pacifist groups such as the American Union against Militarism and the Women’s
Peace Party also mobilized popular opposition.
C. Practically the entire political left condemned the war as imperialism, whereas African America
leaders identified it as a conflict of the white race only.
D. Prominent industrialists bankrolled antiwar activities.
Conflict on the High Seas
I. With no stake in the territorial struggles among European powers, the US might well have remained
neutral if the conflict had not spread to the high seas. Here the US had initially had as many arguments
with Britain as with Germany.
A. The most troublesome issue concerned the freedom of the seas and neutrality rights—the freedom
to trade with the nations on both sides of the conflict.
II. The Lusitania crisis divided Wilson’s government into pro- and anti-British factions. The crisis
continued until September 1915, when Germany announced that submarine commanders would not
attack passenger ships without warning.
III. During 1915 and 1916, Wilson tried at several points to mediate an end to the European conflict
through his aide, Colonel Edward House.
A. House concluded that neither side was interested in peace negotiations.
B. Worsening tensions with Germany caused Wilson to rethink his earlier opposition to preparedness.
The 1916 Election
I. The presidential election of 1916 did not serve as a referendum on the American stance toward the war.
II. Wilson’s narrow margin of victory limited his options in mobilizing the nation for war and planning
the postwar peace.
Toward War
 I. The events of early 1917 further diminished Wilson’s hopes of staying out of the conflict.
A. On January 31 Germany, frustrated by the impasse in the land war, announced the resumption of
unrestricted submarine attacks. In response, Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany
on Feb 3.
B. A few weeks later the release of the “Zimmerman telegram” moved the country closer to war.
Germany’s foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmerman urged Mexico to join the war in exchange for
recovering its territory lost to the US.
II. Throughout March, U-boats attacked American vessels without warning. Wilson appeared before
Congress to ask for a declaration of war.
A. He told the country that America had no selfish aims. He proposed that US participation in the war
would make the world “safe for democracy.”
III. On April 6, 1917, the US declared war on Germany.
Over There
I. To native-born Americans, Europe seemed a great distance away. After the declaration of war many
citizens were surprised to learn that the US planned to send troops to Europe, optimistically having
assumed that the nation’s participation could be limited to military and economic aid.
A. The US had never maintained a large standing army in peacetime. To field a fighting force large
enough to enter a global war, the government turned to conscription.
Conscription
I. The passage of the Selective Service Act in May 1917 demonstrated the increasing impact of the state
on ordinary citizens.
A. The selective service system worked in part because it combined central direction from
Washington with local administration and civilian control, and thus did not tread too heavily on
the tradition of individual freedom and local autonomy.
B. Draft registration also demonstrated the potential bureaucratic capacity of the American state.
II. Although compliance was not universal, most male citizens went along with the draft’s premise of
service as a responsibility of modern citizenship.
III. Wilson chose General Pershing to head the American Expeditionary Force, but the newly formed army
did not have an immediate impact on the fighting.
IV. At first the main American contribution was to secure the safety of the seas. Adopting a plan that
aimed for safety in numbers, the government began sending armed convoys across the Atlantic.
A. Allied shipping losses were cut dramatically.
V. Meanwhile, trench warfare continued on the Western Front. Allied commanders pleaded for American
reinforcements for their units, but Pershing was reluctant to put his independent fighting unit under
foreign commanders.
The Russian Revolution and the Collapse of the Eastern Front
I. On the Eastern Front the strain of fighting the Germans had exposed the weaknesses of the Russian
government under Tsar Nicholas II, and a general mutiny of the troops led to an overthrow of the
monarchy in March 1917.
A. The new provisional government, which Woodrow Wilson supported, promised democratic
reforms but insisted on continuing the war.
II. The communist theorist Vladimir Lenin saw his chance. He believed that a period of “dictatorship of
the proletariat” would be necessary to root out capitalism before an ideal, classless society could
emerge.
A. With the help of Germany, he was able to agitate the provisional government.
III. The new Bolshevik government kept the first part of its promise: Russia agreed to a cease-fire with
Germany and Austria-Hungary on Dec 15, 1917, and signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3,
1918.
 A. In return for an end to hostilities, the Bolsheviks surrendered about 1/3 of Russia’s territories.
Allied Victory in the West
I. No longer facing a hostile Russia, Germany launched a major offensive on March 21, 1918, designed
to break the stalemate on the western front.
A. Allied leaders increased their calls for American troops, and Pershing, who was under orders to
keep the AEF a separate fighting unit, relented a bit to help the Allies bolster their defenses.
II. American forces soon began to arrive in large numbers. Augmented by American troops, the Allied
forces brought the German offensive to a halt in mid-July.
A. The Meuse-Argonne campaign, the main American military contribution to the fighting, pushed
the enemy back across the Selle River and broke German defenses.
III. WWI ended on November 11, 1918, when German and Allied representatives signed an armistice.
A. The flood of American troops and supplies during the last 6 months of the war helped provide the
Allied margin of victory. In many ways this contribution was emblematic of the shift in territorial
power as European diplomatic and economic dominance declined and the US emerged as a world
leader.
The American Fighting Force
I. Although individual bravery was increasingly anachronistic in modern warfare, the war generated its
share of American heroes. Although air power played only a minor role in the conduct of the war, it
captivated the popular imagination.
A. The aerial exploits of daredevil pilots provided a thrill that contrasted with the monotony of trench
warfare. The popular fascination with certain pilots suggests a deep-seated need on the part of the
American public to anoint heroes in what had become an increasingly depersonalized and
mechanized pursuit of war.
Military Morality
I. Another characteristic of WWI was the growing influence of the state—in this case, army officials—
over the private lives of American soldiers. The high ideals of progressivism set the tone for military
service.
A. Reformers urged the adoption of progressive solutions to the vices of alcohol and sex, and
government and military officials agreed.
B. Reflecting the anti-liquor fever taking hold in America, navy ships were declared dry. The army
banned drinking by soldiers in uniform and prohibited the sale or consumption of liquor on army
bases.
II. The army also mounted an ambitious program of sex education.
III. WWI also marked the time that homosexuality emerged as a major social issue. As urban reformers
cracked down on prostitution, they also attempted to curb NY’s gay subculture. The military also
targeted male homosexuality as part of its campaign against vice.
Racism in the Armed Forces
I. Reformers expressed high hopes for democratization and education in the military services, yet the
army reflected the divisions in American society.
II. To sort its conscripts, the army used the newly developed Stanford-Binet intelligence test, putting the
progressive belief in social science at the service of wartime needs.
A. Racial and ethnic variations in the test scores reinforced stereotypes about the supposed
intellectual inferiority of blacks and immigrants, though their lower scores stemmed from the
cultural and environmental biases of the tests.
III. The “Americanization” of the army remained imperfect at best, with African American soldiers
receiving the worst treatment.
A. Blacks were organized into rigidly segregated units, almost under the control of white officers.
They were often assigned the most menial tasks.
 B. Although the policy of segregation minimized contact between black and white recruits, racial
violence erupted in several cases.
IV. Racial equality had never been a central concern of the progressive agenda, and the black experience in
WWI reflected the persistent gap between democratic rhetoric and reality.
A. Blacks often found the French soldiers more willing to socialize with them on a regular basis than
white American soldiers.
Demobilization
I. After the armistice the war lived on in the minds of the men and women who had gone “over there.”
A. Spared the horror of sustained battle, many members of the AEF had experienced war more as
tourists than as soldiers. Before joining the army, most recruits had barely traveled beyond their
hometown.
War on the Home Front
I. The fighting of WWI required massive economic mobilization on the home front. At the height of
mobilization ¼ of the nation’s gross national product went for war production.
A. Business and government proved especially congenial partners, a collaboration that typified the
pattern of state building in America. Similarly, the dismantling of that apparatus when the war
ended reflected the unease that Americans felt about a strong bureaucratic state.
Mobilizing Industry and the Economy
I. Even before the formal declaration of war the US had geared up as the arsenal for the Allied Powers.
US financial institutions increasingly provided capital for investment in the world market once British
financial reserves started to be diverted to the war effort.
A. This shift from debtor to creditor status guaranteed the nation a major role in international
financial affairs after the war and confirmed the new role of the US as a world power.
Paying for the War
I. The disruption in international trade after the outbreak of war in 1914 had reduced the money raised by
tariffs, ordinarily a major source of federal revenues.
A. There were two options: to impose a sales tax or to increase income taxes. They chose the second
option.
II. The resulting War Revenue Bills of 1917 and 1918 transformed the previously limited income tax into
the foremost instrument of federal taxation.
A. The Wilson administration did this along lines influenced by progressivism: following the lead of
the steeply graduated Revenue Act of 1916, it rejected a tax on all wages and salaries in favor of
placing the burden on corporations and wealthy individuals.
B. The corporate excess-profits tax contained in the 1917 law signaled a direct and unprecedented
intrusion of the state into the workings of corporate capitalism.
III. About 1/3 of the cost of the war was raised through taxes. The rest was raised through bonds,
especially the popular Liberty bonds, which encouraged public support for the war effort.
A. The government also paid for the war using the Federal Reserve System to expand the money
supply, making it easier to borrow money.
Wartime Economic Regulation
I. In addition to financing the war, mobilization required the coordination of economic production. The
government never seriously considered exercising total control over the economy, but the war sped up
the creation of a centralized national administrative structure that ultimately would match the
consolidated power of the business and banking communities.
A. The government also created an added incentive for business cooperation by suspending antitrust
laws, which ordinarily outlawed business practices that restrained or monopolized trade.
B. For economic expertise the government turned primarily to those who knew the capacities of the
economy best—the nation’s business leaders.
 II. A series of boards and agencies tried to rationalize and coordinate the economy.
A. The Overman Act of 1918 granted the president control over these agencies, a significant
milestone in the growth of presidential power.
B. A network of industrial committees linked war agencies to organizations in private industry, and
government leaders used a combination of public and private power to enforce their decisions.
C. This semivoluntarist approach represented an attempt to find a middle ground between total state
control of the economy and letting business operate without direction.
III. The Administration allocated the coal needed for operation of the nation’s railroads and factories. By
raising the cost to artificially high levels, the Fuel Administration stimulated the production of coal
from previously unprofitable mines to meet the nation’s energy needs.
IV. The Railroad War Board coordinated the nation’s sprawling transportation system. Because the army
needed trains to move its troops, the board took over the railroads in December 1917. In return it
guaranteed railroad owners a “standard return” equal to their average earnings between 1915 and 1917.
V. The Food Administration was created in 1917 and led by Herbert Hoover. Hoover encouraged the
expansion of domestic production of wheat and other grains.
A. The increased output not only fed the large domestic market but also allowed a threefold rise in
food exports to Europe.
The War Industries Board
I. The central agency for mobilizing wartime industry was the War Industries Board, which was
established in July 1917.
A. After a fumbling start that showed the limits of volunteerism in a national emergency, in March
1918 the Wilson administration reorganized the board under the centralized control of Bernard
Baruch.
B. The WIB reflected the ambivalent attitude of Americans toward government intervention in the
economy.
C. Baruch organized the WIB around specific commodities and industries, whose administers then
negotiated issues such as market allocation with their equivalents in private industry. This frequent
consultation blurred the lines between the needs of business and those of government and often
left patterns of state power undisturbed.
II. The WIB produced an unparallel led expansion of economic powers of the federal government: it
allocated scarce resources, gathered economic data and statistics, controlled the flow of raw materials,
ordered the conversion of factories to war production, set prices, imposed efficiency and standardized
procedures, and coordinated purchasing.
A. The board had the authority to compel compliance, but Baruch preferred to win voluntary
acceptance from industry, often through personal intervention.
B. Business generally supported this governmental expansion because federal growth coincided with
its own interests.
C. Despite higher taxes, corporate profits soared, aided by the suspension of antitrust laws and
guaranteed prices for war work. War profits produced an economic boom that continued without
interruption until 1920.
III. With the signing of the armistice in Nov 1918, the US scrambled to dismantle wartime controls.
IV. Although US participation in the war lasted only 18 months, it left an important legacy for the modern
bureaucratic state. Entire industries had been organized as never before, linked to a maze of
government agencies and executive departments. A modern system of income taxation had been
established, with the potential for vastly increasing federal revenues.
A. The collaboration between business and government had been mutually beneficial, a lesson that
both partners would put to use in state building.
Mobilizing American Workers
 I. WWI produced fewer rewards for workers than it did for owners and managers.
Organized Labor
I. Labor’s position improved during the war, although it remained a junior partner to business and
government.
A. Samuel Gompers traded labor’s support of the war for a voice in government policy, specifically a
spot on the National Defense Advisory Commission. That bargain proved acceptable to
government and business leaders concerned with averting crippling strikes.
B. The War Labor Policies Board coordinated labor and welfare programs in government and
industry.
II. The National War Labor Board arbitrated labor disputes. Its decisions favored labor more than
management, giving important federal support to the goals of labor movement.
A. The board established an 8-hour workday for workers, with time and a half pay overtime, and
endorsed equal pay for women workers.
B. Workers were not allowed to disrupt war production through strikes or other disturbances; in
return the NWLB supported their rights to organize unions and required employers to deal with
shop committees representing workers in the workplace.
C. The NWLB had ample power to enforce its decisions and intervene in disputes.
III. After years of federal hostility toward labor, the actions of the NWLB improved labor’s status and
power and demonstrated the wisdom of labor’s decision to support the war effort to advance its own
interests.
A. Few of the wartime gains lasted.
B. Wartime inflation ate up most of the wage hikes, and a virulent post-war anti-union movement
caused a rapid decline in union membership that lasted into the 1930s.
Black and Mexican American Workers
I. African Americans moved to northern and Midwestern cities between 1910 and 1970 in the “Great
Migration.”
II. Mexican Americans in CA, TX, NM, and AZ also found new opportunities during the war. When
urban growth in the Southwest made the wartime labor shortage more severe, many Mexican
Americans left farm labor for new industrial opportunities.
Women in the War Effort
I. Women were the largest group that took advantage of new wartime opportunities. Factory jobs
formerly reserved for men were now open to them.
A. Everyone expected that these jobs would return to men after the war ended.
II. Professional women found jobs in government service.
III. WWI proved especially liberating for middle class women outside the work force.
A. Women’s clubs turned their organizational energy to the war effort.
B. Suffragist leaders mobilized women’s support for the war through the Women’s Committee of the
Council of National Defense.
C. Housewives played a crucial role in the success of Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration.
Suffrage Victory
I. The war especially affected the battle for woman suffrage.
A. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, argued
that women had to prove their patriotism to avoid jeopardizing the suffrage movement. At the
same time, the NAWSA continued to lobby for the proposed woman suffrage amendment to the
Constitution.
II. Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party took a more militant and confrontational tack, widening
the split in the suffrage movement that had occurred after 1914.
 A. Suffrage militants led by the NWP began picketing in front of the White House in July 1917 to
protest their lack of the vote.
III. In the end it took both suffrage militancy and the NAWSA’s policy of patient persuasion to break the
logjam.
Promoting National Unity
I. The course of American participation in WWI was fundamentally shaped by the progressive period
that preceded the war. Reformers eagerly embraced American involvement as an opportunity to put
progressive ideas into practice.
Wartime Propaganda
I. In April 1917 Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information to promote public backing for the
war, a critical task given the lack of a strong national consensus on American participation.
A. This propaganda agency acted as a magnet for progressive reformers and muckraking journalists.
B. Professional lofty goals such as educating citizens about democracy, promoting national unity,
Americanizing immigrants, and breaking down isolation of rural life, the committee also indirectly
acted as a nationalizing force by promoting the development of a common ideology.
II. The CPI touched the life of almost every American during WWI.
The Climate of Suspicion
I. A spirit of conformity pervaded the home front and many Americans found themselves targets of
suspicion.
A. Quasi-vigilante groups such as the American Protective League mobilized self-appointed “agents”
to spy on neighbors and coworkers.
II. The CPI also urged ethnic groups to give up their Old World customs. All new immigrants were targets
of this Americanization campaign, but German Americans bore the brunt of it because of questions
about their loyalty to the anti-German sentiments stirred up by CPI propaganda.
A. German music and opera were banished from concert halls, publishers removed pro-German
remarks from textbooks, and many communities banned the teaching of German.
B. Although anti-German hysteria dissipated when the war ended, uncertainty and hostility toward
“hyphenated” Americans survived.
Curbing Dissent
I. Law enforcement officials tolerated little criticism of established values and institutions in wartime, as
the militant suffragists picketing the White house discovered.
A. The main legal tools for curbing dissent were the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of
1918. The espionage law imposed stiff penalties for antiwar activities and allowed the federal
government to ban treasonous material from being sent through the mail.
B. The sedition law went further, punishing anyone who might insult the army or navy.
II. The Justice Department also targeted the radical Industrial Workers of the World, who passionately
argued that war benefited the capitalist class at the expense of the workers.
A. By the end of the war the Wobblies had been decimated.
III. Socialists encountered similar reprisals for criticizing the war and the draft.
A. Because of the national war emergency, the Court upheld limits on freedom of speech that would
not have been acceptable in peacetime.
The Eighteenth Amendment
I. The campaign for prohibition was also affected by the wartime climate.
A. In early 20th century America, Prohibition was viewed as a Progressive reform, not a denial of
individual freedom. Urban reformers supported a nationwide ban on drinking.
B. On the eve of WWI, 19 states had passed Prohibition laws and many more allowed communities
to regulate liquor sales and consumption.
 II. The drive for Prohibition also had substantial backing in rural communities. Many people equated
liquor with the sins of the cities. In addition, the churches with the greatest strength in rural areas
condemned drinking.
A. Protestants from rural areas dominated the membership of the Anti-Saloon League, which in the
1910s supplanted the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union as the leading proponent of
Prohibition.
III. Support for the right to drink existed primarily in heavily urbanized states with large immigrant
populations.
A. Alcoholic beverages played a role in certain ethnic cultures, especially those of the Irish and
Germans.
B. Many saloons were in working class neighborhoods and served as gathering places for workers;
machine politicians conducted much of their business in bars.
C. Many immigrants and working-class people rightly regarded Prohibition as an imposition of
middle-class cultural values on them.
IV. During WWI those who supported a constitutional amendment to prohibit drinking gained political
momentum.
A. One spur was the anti-German hysteria of the war years. Because many breweries had German
names, beer drinking became unpatriotic to many people.
B. To conserve food, Congress prohibited the use of foodstuffs to make distilled beverages.
C. In December 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale and
manufacture of liquor. Among its few exceptions were alcohol prescribed for medical reasons and
wine consumed for sacramental purposes.
V. The 18th Amendment was another example of how Progressive solutions to issues of purity, poverty,
and public safety were adopted in wartime. It also demonstrated the widening influence of the state on
matters of personal behavior.
An Unsettled Peace, 1919-1920
I. Wilson confronted the task of creating a new moral international order, whose keystone was a
permanent league of nations.
The Treaty of Versailles
I. Wilson scored an early victory when the Allies accepted his 14 points as the basis for peace
negotiations.
A. The 14 Points represented Wilson’s clearest articulation of his blue-print for the postwar world.
B. He called for open diplomacy, freedom for sea navigation, arms reductions, the removal of trade
barriers, and an international commitment to territorial integrity and national self-determination.
C. Essential to Wilson’s vision was the creation of a multinational organization, a League of Nations.
II. The 14 Points matched the spirit of Progressivism. Widely distributed as propaganda during the final
months of the war, Wilson’s declaration proposed to extend the benefits of the American way of life to
the rest of the world.
A. The League of Nations, acting as a kind of Federal Trade Commission for the world, would
supervise disarmament and curb unilateralism in favor of collective military action.
B. Wilson anticipated that the league would mediate disputes between nations, prevent future war,
and thereby ensure that the Great War would be the war to end all wars.
III. The exclusion of the Soviet Union from the Versailles negotiations was the result of the Allies’ unease
about the ideological direction of the new Soviet state. Lenin’s calls for a proletarian revolution to
liberate the world from capitalism and imperialism posed a direct challenge to the Wilsonian concept
of international order represented by the League of Nations.
Negotiating the Treaties
 I. The Big 4 concurred about excluding Lenin from the peace negotiations, but in other respects the 3
European heads of state sought a peace that differed radically from Wilson’s plan.
A. They wanted to punish Germany through heavy reparations and treat themselves to the spoils of
war.
B. National self-determination, a fundamental principle of Wilson’s 14 Points, bore fruit in the
creation of the independent states of Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia from the
defeated empires of the Central Powers.
C. The establishment of the new states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia not only upheld the principle
of self-determination but also served Wilson’s determination to isolate the Soviet Union from the
rest of Europe.
II. Certain topics, such as the freedom of the seas and free trade, never made the agenda because of Allied
resistance.
A. The old central and eastern European empires were dismantled, but instead of becoming
independent countries, the colonies were assigned to Allied nations to administer as trustees.
B. Economic issues were not faced as squarely as were territorial ones.
III. The American public seemed enthusiastic about a league of nations, as least in principle. However,
when the Senate balked at the treaty, he refused to compromise.
The Battle for Ratification
I. Opposition to the treaty came from several sources. One group, the “irreconcilables,” constituted of
western progressives who disagreed fundamentally with the idea of permanent US participation in
European affairs.
A. Many were horrified with the harsh treatment of Germany.
B. Less dogmatic but more influential was a group of Republicans led by Senator Lodge. They
proposed a list of amendments centered around Article X, the section that called for collective
security measures if a member nation should be attacked. Lodge argued that this provision
restricted Congress’s authority to declare war.
C. Lodge and many other senators felt that the treaty imposed unacceptable restrictions on the
freedom of the US to pursue a unilateral foreign policy.
II. Wilson refused to compromise. Hoping to mobilize support for the treaty, he launched a speaking tour
in a last great effort to take his case directly to the American people.
Defeat
I. The US never ratified the Versailles Treaty or joined the League of Nations. Many wartime issues
remained only partially resolved.
Racial Strife and Labor Unrest
I. The war and the immediate postwar period brought a severe decline in race relations throughout the
country.
A. The volatile mix of black migration and raised black expectations as a result of service in WWI
combined to worsen white racism.
Riots in Chicago
I. One of the worst race riots took place in Chicago in July. It began at Lake Michigan beach when a
black teenager named Eugene Williams swam into the area usually reserved for whites. Someone
threw a rock at his head, and he drowned.
A. The incident touched off 5 days of rioting in which 23 blacks and 15 whites died.
II. Chicago on the eve of the riot was ready to ignite.
A. The arrival of 50,000 black newcomers during the war had strained the city’s social fabric. In
politics black voters often decided the winners of close elections.
B. Blacks and whites competed for jobs, and the more heavily unionized white populations deeply
resented blacks who became strike breakers.
 C. Blacks and whites competed for housing as well, and blacks soon overflowed the racially
segregated south side and moved into Chicago’s intensely ethnic neighborhoods.
III. Chicago blacks did not sit meekly and let whites destroy their neighborhoods. They fought back both
in self-defense and for their rights as citizens.
A. WWI had had an indirect effect on their actions, since many blacks had served in the armed
forces. The talk about democracy and self-determination had raised their expectations, too.
1919 A Year of Strikes
I. Workers harbored similar hopes for a better life after the war. The war years had brought many
industrial employees higher pay, shorter hours, and better working conditions.
A. Many native-born Americans continued to identify unions with radicals and foreigners, and after
the armistice employers resumed their attacks on union activity.
B. Rapidly rising inflation threatened to wipe out worker’s wage increases.
II. The result of workers’ determination and employer’s resistance was a dramatic wave of strikes.
A. The most extensive labor disruption in 1919 was the hard-fought steel strike in which more than
350,000 steelworkers across the country walked off the job in late Sep. the main issue was union
recognition, but the strikes were also protesting 12-hour shifts and 7-day weeks.
B. The company hired Mexicans and blacks to break the strike and maintained steel production at
60% of normal levels. The high production rate doomed the strike.
The Red Scare
I. Underlying many of the social and political tensions in the aftermath of WWI was the fear of
radicalism. Wartime hatred of the Germans was quickly replaced by postwar hostility toward the
Bolsheviks.
A. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the founding of the 3rd International in 1919 to export
revolution throughout the world set these fears in motion.
B. As public concern about domestic Bolshevism mounted, American radicalism rapidly lost
supporters and political influence.
C. The public and the press blamed every disturbance, especially labor conflicts, on radicals.
II. A series of bombings shocked the nation in early spring. Many suspected that the bombings had been
intended to coincide with the communist celebration of International Labor Day.
A. Wilson’s stroke prevented him from providing decisive leadership as hysteria mounted in the fall
of 1919.
The Palmer Raids
I. One aspect of the wartime expansion of state power was increased surveillance of citizens and
repression of dissent.
A. Attorney General Palmer set up an antiradicalism division in the justice department.
B. In Palmer raids, federal agents stormed the headquarters of radical organizations and captured
supposedly revolutionary booty.
C. The dragnet pulled in thousands of alien residents who had committed no crime but were suspect
because of their anarchist or revolutionary beliefs or their immigration background. These aliens
faced deportation without trial.
II. The peak of Palmer’s power came with his New Year’s raids in Jan 1920. Agents invaded private
homes, union headquarters, and meeting halls, holding citizens and aliens without specific charges and
denying them legal counsel.
A. The hysteria of the Red Scare began to abate as the summer of 1920 passed without major labor
strikes or renewed bombings.
The Sacco-Vanzetti Case
I. In May 1920, at the height of the Red Scare, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for
the robbery and murder of a shoe company’s paymaster in South Braintree, MA.
 A. Sacco and Vanzetti were self-proclaimed anarchists and Italian aliens who had evaded the draft;
both were armed at the time of the arrest.
II. Convicted in 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti sat on death row for 6 years while supporters appealed their
verdict. Despite the appearance of new evidence that pointed to their innocence, the motion for a new
trial was denied.